It’s been a while since Medicaid expansion in a red state made news, but South Dakota voters made it happen this week, rejecting an effort by the state’s Republican legislature to block them from passing a ballot initiative to bring the issue to a statewide vote in November. They are following in the footsteps of Maine, Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Missouri, where voters succeeded in getting the matter on statewide ballots and getting Medicaid approved.
As in those states, the Republican government in South Dakota are fighting the people’s will every step of the way. In Tuesday’s balloting, the state tried to pass a constitutional amendment requiring any ballot initiative that raises taxes in the state to pass with more than 60% of the vote. The amendment was clearly intended to stop the citizens’ initiative; just one state achieved expansion with more than 60% approval: Idaho.
South Dakota is par for the course, because in all those states Republican legislatures went to great lengths to try to subvert the voters and find ways to disqualify—or in the case of former Republican Gov. Paul LePage in Maine—simply ignore the Medicaid referenda. South Dakotans weren’t having it. The proposed constitutional amendment to stop their initiative was soundly defeated, 67 to 33%.
“Today, the people of South Dakota have preserved their right to use direct democracy,” Kelly Hall, executive director of The Fairness Project, which has helped several states expand Medicaid via voter referenda said on election night.
“This victory will benefit tens of thousands of South Dakotans who will choose to use the ballot measure process to increase access to health care for their families and neighbors, raise wages, and more policies that improve lives,” Hall said. “We look forward to what’s next in South Dakota: an aggressive campaign to expand Medicaid in the state.”
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One hurdle is done, the next for South Dakota is passing the initiative, but with the kind of margin that the constitutional amendment against it was defeated, they’re at least halfway there. If they succeed, there will just be 11 loser states hanging on to a decade-old battle against Obamacare.
The ham-handedness of the Republicans in this wasn’t lost on voters, since some of them openly admitted they were pushing this amendment specifically to derail Medicaid expansion. That didn’t work.
“First and foremost, we know that South Dakotans came out because they knew the sacred tradition of majority rule was on the ballot,” said Zach Nistler, a spokesman for South Dakotans for Fair Elections, which ran the opposition campaign.
There’s a lesson for the nation’s Democrats to be had in this effort. A campaign well-funded in part by the state’s three big health systems—all of which see the need for getting coverage to some 42,000 South Dakotans—focused on this effort by Republicans to enshrine minority rule. The “ad blitz” as the Argus Leader called it, said the amendment they defeated “would allow 41% of the electorate to control ballot measures that raised taxes or spending.”
That’s a message that worked with ridiculously deep-red South Dakota voters. It’s a message Democrats need to pick up for all their Senate races this fall, because that’s exactly what Republicans at every level are after—minority rule forever.